. >> by the end of the evening, you began to realize, wait a second-- you've got nancy pelosi as an opponent, you have a clear choice of ideologies. we have a tremendous amount of hard work to do. but it's doable. >> they all talked about this, and they began to get more and more optimistic, and they left feeling practically exuberant. >> inauguration day full of events. ten, count them, ten official inaugural balls... >> narrator: across washington that evening... >> stunning crowd of people... >> narrator: the new president had no idea what the republicans were planning. >> ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states and the first lady, michelle obama. (crowd cheering) >> narrator: surrounded by supporters at the inaugural balls, the mood was hopeful. ♪ at last... >> president obama did not have a full sense of what washington was going to be like for him. he had not been in the middle of these kind of down-and-dirty fights, the ugly reality of governing in washington today. >> you have, in obama's case, gone within four years from being an illinois state politician to the m